Saturday, April 16, 2016

Be like Johan

Be like Pele for sure. But when I kept seeing the elegant Dutchman on the cover of football magazines I wanted to be like Cruyff too. Magazines had to be purchased if he was on the posters neatly folded in the middle. Which were immediately pulled out and opened wide. And greeted with an expressive taaaaaarrr! I had no clue what total football was about. But that hardly mattered. What did was that he was awesome. And who doesn't want to be awesome? Of course later -- much later -- when you're smart enough you understand what he was up to. Some saw a Pythaghoras in boots. Olsson didn't see anything. Nureyev something else. He thought that No. 14 should have been a dancer. What the hell do you think he was doing on the pitch Rudolf? Gone too soon. Smoking kills.

And we lost Zaha Hadid too. I wasn't really familiar with her work. Or so I thought. But it's almost impossible not to have come across one of her landmark buildings. Like if you're a fan of Reinhold Messner it will not take you that long before you bump into the name of the trailblazing architect. Her work reminds me of another game-changer: Oscar Niemeyer. And what do you do when an engineer says it can't be done? "Sack the engineer". Thank you Zaha.